R3dshirt

The Ion Bolt is a bit so so when its only a 3 second job, but its gets better fast - love the skill. Almost never put it on auto cast I prefer to micro manage and pick my targets. Any fleeing ship you can slow him down quite a bit. Or simply put an enemy capital ship out of the fight for several moments, the skill recharges quite fast and has a lower cast cost - might tip the balance in a square fight.

Possible work around is for you two to use a VPN, I have used Hamachi in the past to run LAN games over the "internet" and bypass problems such as this one. Link to Hamachi.